When Did You Die?
From Disconnected and Drained to
Energized and Impassioned

For Beyond 50's "Personal Growth" talks, listen to an interview with Temple Hayes.  You'll learn how to connect with those subtle moments which will leave you either disconnected and drained or energized and impassioned.  Little by little, without even knowing it, we chisel away at our whole selves.  Traumatic life experiences, an insatiable quest for perfection, a wounded self-esteem, the food we eat, even our constant connection with technology all lead to subtle deaths each day that prevent us from experiencing the miracles and magic that life has to offer.  Hayes offers 8 steps to stop dying every day and start waking up. 

Resurrected a Thousand Times

Growing up in a deep-rooted Southern Baptist and violent family in South Carolina, she experienced many subtle deaths: her father killed her adored cat and her grandfather ran over her beloved dog with reckless abandon.  Horrifyingly, her mother was forced into getting shock treatments for having an alleged affair that destroyed Hayes' natural trust in people.  Men tried to force themselves on her.  So at 13, Hayes began numbing the emotional pain with alcohol.  She was also hiding her deep connection to spirit (in a way that went against traditional Christian teachings) and her true sexual identity as a lesbian.  Each day, she died inside, deeply wounded with a closed heart.

As an adult, Hayes resurrected herself, embracing the belief that she is a loved and worthy being.  This put her on a path of "waking up and being reborn" to her real self.  She later became a practicing shaman to restore all parts of soul and emerged as an internationally renowned spiritual leader at Unity Campus in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1991. 

"True success is measured by how we thrive and live being totally alive, rather than being drained and weary.  Subtle deaths prevent us from experiencing the miracles and magic that are our birthright.  You light is your energy, your gift to the world.  And your lightness of being is your gift to yourself.  Making a decision to stop dying will greatly increase your capacity to start living and to manifest your true purpose in life.  You will no being to shine," Hayes advised.

8 Steps to Start Waking Up

Step One: How to Put Your Whole Self into Your Life - By nature, we are vibrant beings.  Modern living can keep us disconnected with our true self to live in a half-awake state.  But when we live from a place of wholeness, suggests Hayes, we become energized, making a difference in the world, and that vibrancy is reflected back to us through others.  To be born into who really are requires WAKING UP!

The desire to be perfect stems from early childhood programs of seeking outside approval rather than supporting our own creative abilities.

The shamanistic practice of Soul Retrieval is a deep meditative process to retrieve aspect of your life that are fragmented, weary, and energetically "lost."  You can see how past experiences of feeling disconnected, saddened or compromised so you can transform and truly live with a new, sacred creation story.

Step Two: How to Walk into Your Life by Walking Through Your Life - "We will continue to die a little every day until we move from fear to honoring our feelings to freedom," expressed Hayes.  This is a fear-based life of codependency, passive and aggressive behaviors, and feeling victimized.  When you no longer hold back through paralysis, fear will not return.  She had to own and feel the fear to allow freedom to emerge and open your heart.

"The true medicine for fear is trust," added Hayes.   She is referring to whole-hearted trust that must be exercised like a muscle to dissolve all fear. This is counter to the popular belief that the opposite of fear is love. 

Step Three: How to Restore All Parts of Your Soul and Move from Disconnected and Drained to Energized and Impassioned - Too often, we operate from self-limited beliefs or allow influencers to keep us "small" out of habit because it feels familiar.  Hayes calls it having near-life experiences where we stay in the sidelines, holding ourselves back to not living fully, just tired and weary. 

By following our natural understanding of God, we can better define our Creator, based on personal beliefs, rituals and symbols that allow us to experience his amazing grace for miracles in our life. 

Step Four: How to Be Reborn as the Real You - How we celebrate our birthday is telling of where we are in life.  Do we shy away from the occasion or get excited about it?  "Do not let age be your cage," warns Hayes.  She adds that "aging is inevitable, whereas growing old is optional.  If you celebrate life, your life will celebrate you."

Step Five: How to Take the True You into Your Relationships - Being "reborn" requires an intimacy with self.  The love, value and respect that you seek is all within.  There is nothing missing because there is no separation from others or God.  "In other words, we must move from the hole to the whole," explained Hayes.

Loving yourself is not a selfish act.  The paradox is that if you don't have self-love, your lifetime will be spent being selfish and insecure.

"Our relationship with ourselves is equally an expression of how life will be with everything," added Hayes.

Step Six: How to Allow Your Dreams to Become Real - This is possible when we are no longer seeking approval from outside ourselves, keep our heart open,  and having total acceptance of our uniqueness and magnificence.  Dreams become more possible in coming true.

The amount of energy to maintain your old self to produce the same results recycling the usual self-imposed limitations, aggravations, hesitations is very draining.

In truth, explained Hayes, "When you get into the new rhythm of supporting who you long to be instead of accepting what you will never be, you get high every day, but differently...You get high by going from impossible to possible.  You get a natural high by learning to come true to the magnificent you."

Step Seven: How to Understand and Transcend the Shadows in Your Life - Setting yourself free means letting go of belief systems that are no longer true for you.  Living by old cliches can keep us bound to our old, disempowered way of being.  

According to Hayes, "One of our deepest shadows is our relationship to physical death...Unless we embrace it, we will never have the capacity to truly live."  She adds that a shadow can be simply defined as "almost moments"  that were missed by choosing to be "asleep."  Like the real meaning of sin, we missed the mark. 

When we stand in the light of our truth, the shadow disappears.

Step Eight: How to Live Awake, Full, and Present - It's not enough to intellectualize new truths learned through self-help books and program, but by integrating them can we really help ourselves.

Embodying new truths is done with the energy of an open heart because "a change in heart brings a new start," Hayes teaches.

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